ncx-gitbot
commented
1 year ago NCX response: The goal of climate mitigation is more about mitigating the damage caused by climate change, rather than the actual quantity of carbon in the atmosphere. The carbon in the atmosphere causes increased temperatures through climate forcing, which in turn lead to costly economic and social damages to our water, homes, businesses, and livelihoods. The long-standing research and implementation of the Social Cost of Carbon approximates the net present value of the perpetual stream of future costs and damages caused by climate change. For our methodology, we apply a similar economic framing and a net discount rate of 3.0% to identify the equivalence ratio between the benefits of delaying emissions for 1 year compared with 100 years. See Parisa et al. 2022 for a full explanation of how this economic model yields an economic equivalence between credits of different durations. In order to incentivize action today to avoid those future damages, it is appropriate to use a similar economic framework to calculate the benefits of near-term climate action. While a ratio does not signify a physical equivalence, it does appropriately value the future economic benefits of physical action today.
Commenter Organization: Bluesource LLC
Commenter: Ben Parkhurst
2021 Deferred Harvest Methodology Section: No Section Indicated
Comment: Feedback on 1 Year Projects Utilizing Tonne Year Accounting
Proposed Change: In addition, it is not clear whether Verra will allow for the use of discount rates in association with TYA. We would urge VCS to specifically disallow the application of discount rates in conjunction with TYA in this methodology.